How California Hip-Hop Collective Funk Volume Make an Independent Living

Funk Volume is a DIY hip-hop label from Southern California, and despite millions of Youtube views and several sold-out shows across America, you’ve probably never heard of them. If A$AP Mob are the fashionable dudes who get the girls, Odd Future are the class clowns popping Xanax and snorting pixie sticks, and Chief Keef’s drill peers are the athletes who want to kick your ass—then Funk Volume are the dropouts.

Funk Volume was established in 2009 after one of the label’s co-founders, Hopsin, was unceremoniously dumped from Ruthless Records, the hip-hop label founded by Eazy-E and N.W.A. manager Jerry Heller. Hopsin had been a basement rapper whose YouTube videos blended the vitriolic character-spoofing of Slim Shady-era Eminem with the fisheye lens associated with late-90’s Busta Rhymes; much like Tyler the Creator, the content was self-loathing and borderline masturbatory. After Ruthless dropped him, though, he founded Funk Volume with Damien "Dame" Ritter, a former consultant whose little brother, SwizZz, they subsequently signed. Hopsin had dropped out of high school, SwizZz had dropped out of college, and Dame had dropped out of the corporate world in pursuit of something more down-to-earth. Dizzy Wright, Jarren Benton,and producer DJ Hoppa joined the three and collectively launched the label through social media—connecting with fans directly and booking their own shows without any outside sponsors.

The hypestorm really began when Hopsin’s “Ill Mind of Hopsin 5” earned over a million YouTube views in 24 hours. Tech N9ne invited him to do a guest verse on “Am I A Psycho?”; BET put him in a cypher with Schoolboy Q and Mystikal. In February 2012, he was on the cover of XXL for their annual Top 10 Freshmen list (class of Danny Brown). Dizzy, another Funk Volume dignitary, made the same list the following year, alongside Joey BadA$$ and Travis Scott. He and Hopsin have a mixtape that is now certified Gold on DatPiff, and Funk Volume just confirmed a showcase for South By Southwest.

The artist-fan internet relationship that made Funk Volume possible is similar to the phenomenon that surrounds Lil B, and the recently released Independent Living: The Funk Volume Documentarygives us a glimpse inside that dynamic. We see Dizzy and DJ Hoppa doing ad-hoc recordings in a hotel room, apeshit loyal fans who’ve tattooed the artists’ lyrics onto their bodies, and lots of time spent on the road in Middle America. And yet, the film also captures moments that make touring worth the hustle: Hopsin hanging upside down from a ceiling pipe, rapping over hundreds of screaming fans in a basement—crowds so dense that Hopsin walks across their hands like Jesus on water.

Sure, not every lyric—“I sag my pants until my ass shows/ Because I’m an asshole”—is a winner, and Hopsin’s white contact lenses (which he wears at every show) might seem a tad gimmicky. But Independent Living is revelatory because it shows that Funk Volume have no illusions about what they aren’t. As DJ Hoppa says in the film, “We are not in the Rolling Stone lane….we aren’t there yet.” Fair enough. But so far they’ve proven that they can make a living off their independent-minded music—which is more than you can say about most people in the industry today.